A set of standard colours for printing, each of which is specified by a single number. You can buy a Pantone swatch book containing samples of each colour. SOme computer graphics SOftware allows colours to be specified as Pantone numbers. Even though a computer monitor can only show an approximation to SOme of the colours, the SOftware can output a colour separation for each different Pantone colour, enabling a print shop to exactly reproduce the original desired colour. (1996-03-23)